This Online Education Firm Is Offering an Artificial Intelligence Training Program

Artificial intelligence, the machine learning technology that allows “smart” machines to take over human tasks like driving cars or ordering pizza, is quickly becoming the go-to technology for many industries to hire talent for, including health care, auto, and finance. Research firm Markets and Markets estimates the AI market will grow to more than $5 billion by 2020, given the rising adoption of AI across these industries.

That’s why online education company Udacity is debuting a new way for workers to learn skills needed to be experts in developing artificial intelligence for the likes of IBM and others.

Udacity originally launched “Nanodegrees” to train people hoping to land technical jobs, such as software developing. Nanodegrees also aim to teach people about the advanced and emerging technologies like self-driving cars or Android development for mobile phones. The degrees, which cost $1,800 to $2,400 and can be completed online, take an average of six to nine months to complete. In the past, Udacity has partnered with companies like Googlegoogl, BMW bmwyy, Tata Motors ttm, and Mercedes-Benz ddaif to both create curricula for the degrees and to commit to hiring graduates from the program.

With the artificial intelligence “degree,” Udacity is partnering with IBM’s ibm artificial intelligence unit, Watson, Chinese ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing, and Amazon’s amzn Alexa, which is Amazon’s AI-powered voice assistant. In particular, Udacity says it is working with IBM to develop the curriculum for the course, and with Didi Chuxing on getting graduates from the program hired. IBM is also said to be helping graduates with job opportunities. Specific coursework includes computer vision and natural language processing.

“This is truly a global effort, with global potential. We believe AI will serve everyone best if it’s built by a diverse range of people,” said Udacity’s President and Co-Founder Sebastian Thrun. Thrun is a former Google executive.

The AI program is structured into two terms, and students must take both to complete the Nanodegree program. Each term is $800, and students are expected to spend around 15 hours per week on the course, with the full degree taking six months.

Udacity said it is seeing success with its focused Nanodegrees. The company recently said that 13,000 people have applied for the self-driving car technology Nanodegree, with a number of automotive and technology companies signed up to hire graduates.

For Udacity, the program is a way to make money off of online courses. Earlier this year, Udacity’s revenue from Nanodegrees was growing nearly 30% month over month and the initiative is profitable, according to Thrun. According to one source, Udacity was on track to make $24 million this year. Udacity also just became a unicorn—a startup valued at or above $1 billion—in its most recent $105 million funding round in 2015.

Why This Education Publisher Is Betting on Online Degrees

Natalie Hilton travels past her central London university every day, listening to lectures on the bus, studying towards a masters degree without ever setting foot on campus.

Hilton, a 24-year-old with a full-time job in advertising, is part of the first intake at King’s College London to study a fully online course to enable her to work in mental health.

The scheme is produced by Pearson, the world’s largest education publisher, which is looking to online higher education courses to help revive its fortunes after a downturn in its traditional textbooks and marking businesses.

If the model succeeds, with Pearson handling the marketing, recruitment and design of online courses, it could help open up higher education by providing fresh impetus to distance learning and also save money for cash-strapped universities.

“The level of resource to do this in an absolutely first-rate way is probably beyond most institutions,” said King’s principal and president, Professor Ed Byrne, explaining the decision to work with Pearson. “We see this as bringing a King’s education to a larger, wider group of students.”

It could also improve Pearson’s finances. The company, which sold the Financial Times newspaper and its stake in The Economist magazine last year to concentrate on education, has been hit by several profit warnings in recent years.

As the economy recovered in its biggest market, the United States, more people went into employment than education. It has also suffered from students borrowing or buying second-hand books, and a row in the United States over testing standards.

Double-Digit Growth

Pearson’s online program management (OPM) business made 223 million pounds ($277 million) in revenue last year, a fraction of the 4.5 billion pounds the group made as a whole, but analysts forecast it will grow at a double-digit percentage in the next few years.

Nearly all of the division’s revenue currently comes from the United States, where it is providing online courses at more than 40 universities and competes with the likes of 2U, Academic Partnerships, Bisk, and Wiley Education Solutions.

Pearson believes its size gives it an edge because its OPM division can benefit from the expertise and products of its other education businesses.

“Digital opens up big opportunities for Pearson to improve access and outcomes in higher education,” said Pearson’s global head of product Tim Bozik.

The company is also hoping to get a head start on competitors in Britain, its second-largest market, where it says the deal with King’s is the first of its kind.

Hilton’s Masters in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health is designed and taught by King’s professors and tutors, through an online platform including video lectures, tutorials, and course materials, academic and personal support.

While she could finish the masters without once meeting her tutors, she has weekly video conferences with them, and a virtual message board stimulates conversation and debate with professors and other students from around the world.

As well as the psychology masters, King’s offers a law program online. At 15,600 pounds and 17,400 pounds respectively for the full 12-module course, the online degrees cost as much as attending the university in person.

The courses thus provide a lucrative opportunity for universities to expand without being limited by the physical space of the university campus, backed by Pearson’s logistics.

King’s aims to expand to 5,000 online students in the next five years and broaden the portfolio of online courses offered.

While the growth potential of these courses is in theory limitless, Pearson emphasized there was no incentive to enroll huge numbers of students, as selectivity was a big part of the appeal of institutions such as King’s.

Hilton, for one, is sold: “I have found it wonderful,” she said. “I would never go back to physical learning.”

Udacity Chief Says He Would Send His Son to a Traditional University

A few years ago, when MOOCs—or “massive online open courses”—were on the rise, their passionate advocates hailed them as the next big thing in education.

But not so fast.

“If my son was admitted to, say, Carnegie [Mellon University] or Udacity, I would send him to Carnegie [Mellon],” Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, an online education service focused on tech subjects, said on Tuesday.

Thrun described colleges and universities as still “incredibly old” in their approach to teaching and in their format. Services like Udacity, therefore, aren’t competing with them, he said.

“There’s still a lot of inertia, and there’s benefits to university that we can’t cover,” he said, speaking at the annual TechCrunch Disrupt tech conference in San Francisco. Campus life and its social interactions are very important for young adults, he added.

Thrun recently taught a course in Stanford University. He’s also recently created a course for Georgia Tech University, though he says it’s online and he’s not actively involved in teaching it.

Thrun’s vision is that traditional college education will continue, but that it will evolve with more modern touches over time. Services like Udacity, which has started offering “nanodegrees,” or small programs with a focus akin to mini-degrees of study, will operate in parallel by helping people with life-long learning, as he says.

This idea of continuous education for learning new skills—as opposed to relatively brief stints at college— is something Thrun says hasn’t really become the norm yet.

Speaking of his nanodegrees, Thrun noted that his company has had to deliver on its promise to refund tuition to graduates who fail to find jobs in their field of study within six months. That’s not to say that every student has found a job because not all complete courses for that purpose. But last year alone, 500 nanodegree students were able to get jobs thanks to their new education, said Thrun.

And nanodegrees from Udacity seem to be slowly gaining the trust and recognition from employers. Indian e-commerce company Flipkart, for example, has hired some Udacity nanodegree holders without even interviewing them, Thrun said.

Udacity Taps Into Demand for Self-Driving Cars With New Curriculum

As automakers, startups, and technology companies race to develop self-driving cars, demand is soaring for workers who can create the brains for these autonomous vehicles.

At least, that’s what online education startup Udacity is betting on. The company plans an online course for people who want to become a self-driving car engineer.

Students in the one-year online class will work on interactive projects in computer vision and robotic controls, as well as other software development skills required to build and develop self-driving car technology. Salaries for engineers with these skills are $68,800 to $210,000, according to Udacity, with an average pay of $138,000.

Udacity’s bet on self-driving cars, promoted on both its website and through Twitter, comes at a time of huge investment in the industry. Tesla tsla, Google, Ford, General Motorsgm, as well as startups including NuTonomy, Local Motors, and Comma.ai are all working on self-driving car technology in one form or another.

Udacity says on its website that students in the program will master technologies that are “going to shape the future.” Students at schools like Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley can already take classes in various subjects such as artificial intelligence related to self driving cars for credit. Some of these universities even have research partnerships with automakers that are developing autonomous vehicles. Toyota’s relationship with MIT and Stanford is just one example. Udacity is different because many of its courses are designed as continuing education for people who already have a post-graduate degree and want to add new skills.

Unlike some of Udacity’s other classes, this one for autonomous vehicles is not for beginners. Udacity’s course description says students should have a background in probability, statistics, and basic linear algebra as well as experience with Python or another other scripting language.

Job openings in Google’s X division, which is leading the company’s push into self-driving cars, confirms that experience is required to get hired. Candidates for a robotics engineer position at Google, for example, must have a master’s degree in computer science, robotics, or equivalent practical experience. They must also have hands-on expertise in one or all of these areas: computer vision and machine learning along with lasers or-infrared sensitive radar.

The curriculum for the self-driving car course was developed by Sebastian Thrun, a Google roboticist and Stanford professor who founded Udacity in 2012. Thrun stepped down as Udacity’s CEO in April, but remains at the company’s president and chairman. Vishal Makhijani, the company’s chief operating officer, took over the CEO job.

The course about self-driving car technology is part of Udacity’s nanodegrees, a paid certification course designed to train people for software development and other technical jobs. It’s unclear when the classes will start (Udacity’s website merely says coming soon) or what they will cost (other nanodegree programs are $199 per monthly). While there’s no guarantee that an Udacity student will get a job, Udacity touts its partnerships with tech companies like Google as a selling point to prospective students.

What it’s like to be in a self-driving car:

Udacity initially partnered with colleges and offered free courses online. When those partnerships failed, Udacity partnered with Facebook and Google to offer courses and certifications for workers who want to learn new tech skills.

The company introduced the “nanodegree” in 2014, and earlier this year, expanded the program from the U.S. to India. Udacity raised $105 million in new funding last November, pushing the company’s theoretical value to around $1 billion.

No, You Still Can’t Go To High School Online, FTC Says

The Federal Trade Commission charged two so-called online “high schools” this week, accusing them of tricking consumers into paying hundreds of dollars for a diploma while actually peddling “worthless” pieces of paper.

Cracking down on the alleged “diploma mills,” the FTC took the opportunity to remind consumers that even as online high school education has proliferated along with online universities, it is often a scam. The websites often promise to sell customers a high school equivalency certificate known as a GED for minimal coursework or a test that can be completed online.

But no U.S. state currently recognizes high school equivalency exams taken online as valid, and universities and employers typically don’t either, the FTC warned in a new scam alert.

In the case of the online programs accused Wednesday, which were operated by companies like Stepping Stonez Development and Capitol Network Distance Learning Programs, consumers paid fees of $135 to $349 for a supposed diploma. All they had to do in terms of lessons was take four online multiple-choice tests with no time limit and score at least 70% correct. But if they failed to get even that many questions right, the websites often directed them to retake a version of the test with the correct answers highlighted.

Sometimes, consumers earned “credit” for an accounting course if they checked a box saying they could balance a checkbook; other times, they could fulfill a music course requirement by clicking that they listened to songs occasionally. “If a company says you can get a diploma in no time at all or by simply taking an online test, it’s almost certainly a scam,” Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, said in a statement announcing the charges.

The FTC warned consumers to be aware of telltale signs of an online high school scam, such as claims that you can get a diploma without ever leaving home, or fees for the diploma itself but not the actual classes (at legitimate schools, it’s the other way around). “No classes? No in-person test? All online? That’s a scam,” the FTC’s alert says.

While states will award high school diplomas if students pass one of the four accepted equivalency exams (such as the GED), they always require that the tests be taken under the following conditions, according to the FTC:

These guys are making bank by teaching online

So far, despite all the hype, few investors have gotten rich off the boom in online education startups. But that doesn’t mean no one’s making money.

Udemy, which allows users to create their own online courses, has raised $113 million with a model that charges users a fee and pays teachers based on popularity—some more than others. Take Alun Hill, who used his earnings to move to a fortress in Malta after he recorded a series of popular classes (including one on how to make money on Udemy), which he says still brings in $1,000 a day. Former high school math teacher Rob Percival, the company’s top instructor, has made more than $2 million since 2014. And Percival’s friend and tennis partner, Ben Tristem, says he earns in the high six figures teaching game development.

Not everyone gets to Malta, though: Average Udemy teacher take-home pay is $8,000.

A version of this article appears in the November 1, 2015 issue of Fortune with the headline “Meet the guys making bank by teaching online.”

Cornell partners with Fortune for online business education program

The online education market got another player on Wednesday when Cornell University’s online learning group, eCornell, and Fortune announced the launch of an online business education program.

The program titled “Mastering 21st Century Business Strategy” consists of six courses, each of which takes five to seven hours to complete. Participants who complete all six classes, which will cover topics like strategic positioning in markets and mergers and acquisitions strategy, will receive a certificate in business strategy from Cornell. Professor Justin Johnson of Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management designed the program, which will feature videos from several Fortune journalists. The program aims to provide students with course curricula that draws on the Fortune’s editorial resources, its access to business leaders, and its decades of business journalism.

Do online courses deliver any career benefits? Coursera certainly thinks so

After making a splash a few years ago as a potential alternative to the traditional higher education model, startups offering massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are still trying to find their way. Are these platforms delivering anything of use to learners? And if so, who is benefiting most? On Tuesday, Coursera, the three year-old online learning platform, released data showing that those who complete their courses are seeing benefits on the job.

Coursera, along with the University of Pennsylvania and University of Washington, surveyed 52,000 people who completed its courses. Of those who responded, 72% took online courses to advance their careers. And 87% of that group reported that they experienced some kind of career benefit from taking those courses, including feeling better equipped for a current job or improved candidacy for a new job; 33% reported tangible career benefits, including a pay raise, promotion, a new job, or starting a new business.

“Tangible benefits are reported at an even higher rate among learners from emerging economies, in lower SES [socioeconomic status] brackets, and from other non-traditional education backgrounds, signaling that MOOCs are able to help those with great need,” says Daphne Koller, president and co-founder of Coursera.

The report only surveyed Coursera users who had completed courses. MOOC providers, including Coursera, have taken heat for their high attrition rates. Coursera boasts 15 million registered learners worldwide, but only about 2.5 million of those students have ever completed a single course on the site. A 2013 study found that only 4% completed Coursera’s classes. (Koller says that’s because Coursera’s model encourages users to “shop around” until they find a class they like.)

Koller claims the new data refutes the long-standing criticism that Coursera primarily serves well-educated working professionals. Indeed, 83% of those who participated in the company’s study had a college degree or higher, and only 11% of respondents finished their formal education at high school or had only completed some college. At the same time, 42% of emerging market respondents without a bachelor’s degree and 39% of students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds reported receiving tangible career benefits from Coursera courses. Meanwhile, 35% among both the more educated and the wealthier groups of survey respondents said they received similar benefits.

Koller says it’s important that Coursera reach learners from a lower socioeconomic status—presumably those without post-secondary degrees—since they are more likely to reap educational benefits from taking online courses. For instance, she noted that learners in emerging markets who are not accepted into a top university in their home country have fewer options to receive high-quality education outside of online providers. MOOCs can potentially fill that gap. But it’s still a work in progress.

Koller says the study’s results illustrate the platform’s promise for disadvantaged learners, especially those in emerging markets. Coursera is planning to launch courses in more languages and increase its mobile capabilities since many people in emerging markets only access the Internet via smartphone. About 48% of Coursera’s total registered user base is from emerging markets, with China in the lead, followed by India and Brazil. It offers 1,000 courses total in 35 languages.

How online education could narrow the global skills gap

It has been widely reported that U.S. employers have a hard time finding skilled talent to fill critical jobs. Rapid developments in digital technology, as well as innovations in science and engineering, have created a gap between need and availability of the skills required across these industries.

Though not limited to any specific age group, the issue particularly affects millennials, who collectively hold more college degrees than any previous generation. According to the White House Council of Economic Advisors’ October 2014 report, 47% of young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 had received some form of post-secondary degree (associates, bachelor’s, or graduate). However, a recent global survey from Deloitte found that the overwhelming majority of respondents felt it was on-the-job skills—not what they had learned in college — that got them through their daily workload. The study concluded that there was a significant gap between the skills desired by workplaces and what those polled had actually possessed by graduation.

This gap may even widen in the coming years. The White House study also found that despite the lucrative nature of careers in the computer sciences, the share of millennials choosing computer and information science majors has steadily fallen over time. And, if millennials are considered to be the most computer savvy and connected generation to date, and not enough of them possess the necessary programming skills for today’s business needs, what does that say about Boomers and Gen Xers?

While the primary mission of our colleges and universities should remain focused on education, rather than skills training, many influencers in both higher education and the private sector have acknowledged the skills gap and are experimenting with new approaches—sometimes teaming up on initiatives to augment the college experience. Business leaders and educators alike are turning to new technologies, and skills-based assessment practices, to find and train the workforce needed today.

In the private sector, some companies—especially in technology-based industries—are moving toward hiring practices that place more emphasis on skills and aptitude. Robert Smith, founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, has been vocal about skills-based hiring. His firm relies heavily on an aptitude test for its hiring, as well as an assessment of emotional intelligence quotient and leadership abilities. The company has placed a roofer, a pizza franchise worker, and a retail shelf-stocker into high-level management positions. Vista Equity Partners even took a mailroom employee from one of its own portfolio companies and placed him into a quality assurance role.

Bridges are being developed to cross the chasm that separates a talented but skills-deficient workforce and the glut of lucrative, yet unfilled jobs. LaunchCode, a nonprofit organization that finds hardworking people who lack the traditional credentials to get a job has applied group-based online learning —for example, using HarvardX’s CS50x course on edX—to quickly prepare candidates for tech-related open positions with Fortune 500 companies.

With LaunchCode, immediate HR needs are addressed directly through intensive education, focusing on building skills for today. Previously, untapped workers can gain entry to fields that were once closed to them. Ninety percent of the people entering a LaunchCode program have no previous programming experience. In St. Louis, LaunchCode placed more than 140 people in paid apprenticeships in a little over a year. And, 90% of those were offered full-time employment with their company once their apprenticeships ended.

Although they are not online, skills-focused boot camps like those offered by General Assembly and Hack Reactor are also gaining in popularity. For approximately $15,000, these intensive training programs improve students’ chances for landing competitive, skills-based jobs. San Francisco’s Hack Reactor has publicly shared a 98% job placement rate within 90 days from completion of a 12-week web development program—at an average annual salary of $110,000. New models are also springing up that offer some measure of guarantee: the newly-founded Viking Code School, which offers a 14-week class completely online, does not require students to pay until they land a job with at least a $30,000 annual salary.

The skills gap is a real threat to productivity in the U.S. The education world and the professional world can address this issue by finding ways to work together with the help of online education, opening up more avenues to learners and employees alike based on skill and ability.

Anant Agarwal is the CEO of edX and a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Neither Agarwal nor edX are investors of the companies mentioned in the article. Launch Code uses HarvardX’s CS50x course on edX.

This company is adding on-demand help to win the online education race

In early April, professional social network LinkedIn shelled out $1.5 billion to acquire Lynda.com, one of the largest and oldest online learning marketplaces, with the goal of becoming the professional enrichment destination of choice.

But Pluralsight, a Farmington, Utah-based online learning company that provides education in technical topics, is not worried.

Instead, the company announced on Thursday that it has recently acquired, at undisclosed terms, San Francisco startup HackHands to bolster its own service. HackHands is a startup whose on-demand service lets people connect to subject matter experts specializing in web and software development via a video-chat, screen-sharing, and so on.

“We’ve been looking around at different ways to introduce online mentoring or tutoring to our platform,” Pluralsight co-founder and CEO Aaron Skonnard told Fortune of his company’s decision to acquired HackHands.

Founded in 2004, Pluralsight wants to be the full-service online education hub where professionals go to pick up extra skills, polish their own, or even just learn to use a new tool for work. Taught by carefully vetted instructors, its courses covers topics such as coding in Java and how to use virtualization—a way to squeeze more efficiency out of data centers—tools from VMware. It provides monthly and yearly subscription-based access to its courses both to enterprises and individual users.

Pluralsight has been extending into areas such as providing ratings of students’ skills and certifications when they complete a course. With its purchase of HackHands, it’s now adding live help from topic experts to its education arsenal.

“When you look at online learning, in general, our thesis is that this is a core thing that’s missing today,” Skonnard said of adding on-demand expert help. “That’s why a lot of people out there believe that online education won’t work for them, because they’re missing that piece.”

Under HackHand’s own model, the company charged $1 per minute of help from experts and split the revenue with them. Pluralsight, however, will implement a more supply-and-demand-based dynamic pricing model in which students and experts will set the prices they prefer and be matched based on that. The company will also extend the service to eventually cover all the topic areas Pluralsight’s course cover, not just programming as HackHands offers at the moment.

But it’s getting a good start. HackHands currently has over 300,000 registered students and over 3,000 active experts signed up, according to Skonnard.

Pluralsight also plans to let HackHands’ current partnerships with customers like Cloud9 IDE and General Assembly continue, though it may rethink partnerships with others if they are direct competitors.

Nevertheless, Skonnard is still aware that the battle is not won, and the LinkedIn-Lynda creature will still be competition — and that’s why Pluralsight is heads-down on growing and improving its product. An IPO is on the map at some point but Skonnard isn’t commenting on the plans or timing of it.

“In the end, if everyone is on a level playing field, it all comes back to the quality of the content,” he said.